Reasons to love living in an apartment

1. My own kitchen 
2. People walk their dogs, and they let me pet them
3. Your own bathroom
4. Walking distance from a Barnes and Noble, Staples, and Whole Foods
5. Bus conversations
6. Entertaining
7. Playing Guitar Hero as loud as I want
8. Meeting classmates whose names I didn't know before
9. Not having a day lag with mail
10. Brewing my coffee my way
11. Watching parents teach their kids how to ride bikes
12. Sitting on my porch
13. Thrift shopping
14. Spending free time flipping through cookbooks
15. Couch
16. Artwork above the couch
17. Going to bed at 9pm
18. Having room to iron
19. Living and going to school in two different places
20. Baking bread

Valentine's Day

Today I had the opportunity to preach at Rider University's chapel this evening on "A Different Kind of Love" based on Ruth 1:1-18. It went well.

Rehearsals for the play are coming along. Still trying to get those lines down. "The ancient saying is no heresy. Hanging and wiving go by destiny."

I've been in my new apartment for over a week now, and my kitchen is pretty well furnished. Tomorrow I'll be making chicken chimichangas. Because I can. And because chicken was on sale last weekend.

That's about it for me.

Replying to the Open Letter to the PCUSA

My seminary is on fire discussing the "Open Letter" document that came out on February 7th. A lot of us see things differently, particularly the young (under 30) Presbyterians who are on the ordination track. We are all committed to the unity of the PC(USA). We made the decision to come to seminary rather than pursue other (probably better paying) careers. To many of us the church is not dying. It's being renewed. The church in the coming century will not look like the church in the 20th Century or the 16th Century or the 2nd Century. The church is constantly hearing the Holy Spirit speaking in different ways. It is not the number of church members that makes a church alive. It is the presence of the Spirit.

I would like to point you to Rev. Margaret Aymer Oget's reply. She puts forth a much better reply about the other issues than I could at this time.

I respectfully decline the invitation to the gathering this August. I will be in Hebrew, preparing for Ordination Exams, and living into my call in the PC(USA).

Two Awesome Things

Two awesome things have happened in the last couple of days. I moved into my first grown-up apartment, and I got cast in the part of Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice which the seminary is putting on this semester. A good friend of mine got cast as Gratiano, the dude Nerissa marries; and we're going to have a lot of fun. Merchant is a tragic comedy with lots of interesting religious and cultural questions you can discuss with your friends after you've seen it. Most of the scenes Nerissa is in are the comedy scenes, although looks like I'll be standing through a long court scene with nothing to do again this year. Hopefully next year the play will have no court scene. The apartment is fabulous and most everything's still in boxes. I don't have many storage things yet, and I'll be hitting thrift stores next weekend. Bookshelves I'm in desperate need of. The parents have mailed me a kitchen-in-a-box, and until then it's sandwiches, salads, oatmeal, and microwavable soups. Sounds great to me.